#227 / A Book I Do Not Plan To Read

Click Here For The Blog In The Original

The image above is taken from the Berkeley Journalism website. It depicts Michelle Goldberg, a columnist for The New York Times. Goldberg's "What I Cover" statement on The Times' website indicates that she focuses her writing on "politics and culture from a left-leaning, feminist point of view." In early August, Goldberg did a book review in The Times that was titled as follows: "JD Vance Just Blurbed a Book Arguing That Progressives Are Subhuman."

As someone who identifies as a "progressive," I was naturally interested, and I read Goldberg's column.

The book Goldberg reviewed is titled, Unhumans, at least that is the title that Goldberg used in her  column. The full title of the book is significantly longer, as follows: Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them). Goldberg is correct that vice presidential candidate JD Vance did recommend the book, although Goldberg charitably suggests in her column that Vance may well have "recommended Unhumans without actually reading it, a practice that’s not unheard-of in book publishing."

Goldberg's hypothesis that Vance may have endorsed Unhumans without having read it is charitable, in one sense (stand by to learn more about the book), but it is not very flattering in another. A political candidate who would make an endorsement and recommendation without having any real knowledge of what he is talking about is not someone whom I'd like to put a heartbeat away from the presidency, and as Goldberg quite properly says, "unless and until he credibly distances himself from it, we should take [Vance] at his word that he shares the book’s analysis. After all, some of the language in Unhumans resembles his own rhetoric."

As far as I know, Vance has taken no action to "distance himself" from Unhumans, or to repudiate his book jacket recommendation. Thus, let us accept the fact that Vance actually agrees with what Unhumans says. 

Let me tell you what Unhumans says, as outlined by Goldberg - first noting, before listing the claims made in the book, that the author of the book, Jack Posobiec, is "best known for promoting the conspiracy theory that Democrats ran a satanic child abuse ring beneath a popular Washington Pizzeria." 

Goldberg identifies the following claims made in Unhumans: 

"Leftists" don't deserve the status of human beings.

"Leftists" are "waging a shadow war against all that is good and decent which will end in apocalyptic slaughter if they are not stopped." 

"Leftists" are "opposed to humanity itself, [and] "place themselves outside of the category completely in an entirely new misery-driven subdivision, the 'unhuman.'"

"Progressivism" is "just the latest incarnation of an ancient evil dating back to the late Roman Republic and continuing through the French Revolution and Communism today."

"Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the 'unhumans.'"

Francisco Franco, who overthrew the democratic Second Spanish Republic in the country's 1930s civil war, is a "great man of history," properly compared to George Washington, and Franco was correct about good governmental policy when he said that "we do not believe in government through the voting booth."

Thanks to Michelle Goldberg, I can delete Unhumans from my "must read" list. That's a book I do not plan to read. 

And what about the Trump-Vance presidential ticket? Well, Michelle Goldberg certainly gives me another reason to be sure to vote on November 5th, and to vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, not the Trump-Vance ticket. I do not want to help elect a vice presidential candidate who has endorsed views like the ones listed above, and I don't want to vote for a presidential candidate who has done the same - which former president Trump actually has done, though I doubt has read any books about that (or about much else, either)!

To Subscribe Just Click This Link

 

Image Credit:

https://journalism.berkeley.edu/alum-michelle-goldberg/